


Prodigal

by Annerb



Series: Down Here Among the Wreckage [2]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Apocafic, Darkfic, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-20
Updated: 2009-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:01:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22756729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annerb/pseuds/Annerb
Summary: Five years ago, SG-1 broke in half. Two years ago, Earth lost. Today, there is one last chance to fix things. But sometimes the pieces just don’t fit back together again.
Relationships: Samantha "Sam" Carter/Jack O'Neill
Series: Down Here Among the Wreckage [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1635658
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [Prodigue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29627391) by [Spidi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spidi/pseuds/Spidi)



Anubis reserves a unique fate for Earth.

There’s no specially engineered virus to run rampant through the population, no stolen Stargate to ensure no one escapes. Not like Chulak.

There’s no poisoned atmosphere, no burned sky and boiling seas. Not like Hebridan.

There’s no quick death from above, no grinding of the planet into nothing more than stellar dust. Not like Abydos.

Anubis has other ideas for Earth, for the rally point of rebellion, of hope.

He comes with his ships. A relatively small fleet, no more than seven, strategically positioned around the globe. Whether he doesn’t fear Earth’s pitiful weapons against his Ancient-enhanced defenses, or he just wants to ensure that the planet’s last few hours are as chaotic as possible, Anubis maneuvers his ships down through the atmosphere, hovering like a black stain over the major continents.

The first target is Cheyenne Mountain.

The second is Washington, D.C.

Earth burns.

In the end, he levels the three hundred largest cities. Haphazard nuclear attacks from the ground bounce off his ships, decimating hundreds of more cities, raining death for thousands of square miles. Only then does the largest standing army in existence sweep through, clearing out any last pockets of resistance, enslaving all who survive.

Anubis breeds the Tau’ri for pets and slaves and experiments, makes them the backbone of his new Empire. Builds himself palaces and temples and sits upon a throne on the grave of the last great myth standing in his way.

This is how Earth dies.

By some miracle of intel or just Anubis’ hubris, they know one month before that the end is coming. But it’s not long enough to devise a solution, some last minute defense against the unbeatable ships. Those same ships that reduced the Asgard to nothing more than a few scattered individuals living in hiding, safe-guarding their knowledge and technology because that’s the only thing they’ve ever understood.

The Asgard never really knew sacrifice and rising from the ashes, not the way the Tau’ri know them. With the end of their superiority, the Asgard are lost, drifting.

The Tau’ri, on the other hand, are used to being the underdog. They are too stubborn, too stupid to ever lie down.

For the month they await the inevitable, they build other worlds, establish new centers of rebellion, spread themselves across the galaxy like an infestation too insidious to be stamped out.

One day, they know they will return.

And Earth will live again.


	2. What Once Was Lost

It’s been two years since Daniel last set foot on Earth. Two years since Anubis drove them into hiding like guerrilla revolutionaries. Five years since he watched Sam Carter walk through the gate with her father, part of him understanding even then that he might very well never see her again. But now it’s only been five minutes since he turned his back on the building she calls home, since she slipped a few precious words into the pages of his journal, five minutes since he finally accepted that she was well and truly lost.  
  
The Sam Carter he knew and respected never would have refused to help, no matter what.  
  
Daniel walks away from her house, her prison, her self-imposed exile. His two companions fall into single file on either side of him out of habit, although Daniel suspects this has more to do with their wish for silence. Cam leads them down the hill, trying not to look like he’s disappointed by Sam’s refusal to rise to the occasion. Daniel walks behind him, matching his step to the Colonel’s as Teal’c follows, sandwiching Daniel in the middle.  
  
It doesn’t help.  
  
Sam’s words pound in his mind in time to his steps and for the first time since this all began, Daniel begins to doubt this battle can be won. He begins to question what the hell they’re still struggling for.  
  
Maybe there is some great truth to be found in Sam’s words, a mystery solved.  
 _  
Some things you just don’t come back from._  
  
Maybe they are fooling themselves that they can change anything. Anubis has already won.  
  
They’ve reached the gate, and Daniel moves towards the DHD without giving the action much thought, punching in the glyphs for the Omega Site, but when the wormhole flushes into life, he knows he has no intention of going with them. Not right now. Not with these words still in his mind.  
  
“You two go ahead,” Daniel says as his companions move up the stairs. “I’m going back to see Jacob.”  
  
“Jackson,” Cam complains, dropping back from the event horizon. “You know it makes me twitchy when you insist on running all over the galaxy on your lonesome.”  
  
Cam likes to think of them as a team rather than seeing himself as a babysitter set to the task of keeping his eclectic group of scientists and aliens from getting themselves killed. Mostly Daniel feels sorry for him. Cam doesn’t know what a real team is.  
  
“Wasn’t really asking for your permission,” Daniel says, leaning back against the DHD.  
  
Cam looks ready to lay in to him, but holds his tongue when Teal’c puts a restraining hand on his arm.   
  
“We will see you when you return,” Teal’c says with a small nod before turning to step through the Stargate. Teal’c obviously gets that Daniel is one small push from complete meltdown and doesn’t want to be near ground zero.   
  
Left without any other choice, Cam shoots Daniel one last look as if to convey how displeased he is, before stepping into the wormhole.  
  
Daniel blows out a breath as the wormhole disengages and lowers himself to the steps. For a moment, he considers walking back up the mountain.  
 _  
Some things you just don’t come back from._  
  
“Did you find what you came for?” someone asks.  
  
Daniel looks up in alarm, recognizing exactly how alone and exposed he is here, but the speaker is only Gairwyn. Looking at her, he doesn’t feel the warm familiarity she once might have evoked. It still feels like she somehow kidnapped Sam from them.   
  
“You should have told us she was here,” he says.  
  
She tilts her head to one side, and he has the annoying feeling of being analyzed, x-rayed by her clear gaze. “That was never my decision to make,” she answers, calm and obviously comfortable with her choices.   
  
Daniel knows it would be easy to shatter that certainty. Just a few simple words. In his anger, he actually considers doing it for a moment, considers telling her that Thor is dead. That Anubis captured him and drained every secret from the Asgard’s formidable brain before killing him, scattering his consciousness like background noise in the vacuum of space so that no new body could ever contain it. That the majority of the Asgard died in a similar fashion.  
  
Daniel looks into Gariwyn’s clear, faithful eyes and wants to destroy her. It may even be a kindness in the long run, to prepare her for what is coming. But he thinks of Sam, thinks of her tidy house and frozen tongue and can’t do it. He can’t shatter her perfect world.  
  
“It is good that you came,” Gairwyn says when Daniel remains silent. “You will see.”  
  
The words have the cadence of prophecy, the slight vibration of things to come. Once, Daniel might have been willing to believe.  
  
“May the gods travel with you,” she says before turning her back on him and slipping back up the forest path. Only there are no more gods to walk with.   
  
Pushing to his feet, Daniel dials the latest Tok’ra world, needing to speak to Jacob, needing to see it clear on his face that Sam really is lost.  
  
That it really is all over.  
  
* * *  
  
There’s a slight buzz of activity in the Tok’ra halls when Daniel arrives, which is fairly unusual. The Tok’ra are a lot like the Asgard these days, a race with one foot already in the grave. A fate like that lends a certain amount of listlessness to a people. Daniel remembers that first hand.  
  
He’d passed a tel’tac in the sands near the gate when he arrived, so he assumes this is the source of the current surge in energy. One of their agents must have returned, maybe with some big new piece of intel.   
  
Daniel couldn’t care less.  
  
He finds Jacob in his quarters, in the midst of packing a crate with what looks like fabric.  
  
“Daniel,” Jacob says when he catches sight of him, sounding surprised and slightly alarmed. “I wasn’t expecting you back.” His eyes dart past Daniel’s shoulder.  
  
Daniel follows the movement, finding nothing behind him but an empty hallway. He’s more interested in Jacob at the moment, anyway. Like the rest of the Tok’ra, he seems wound a bit tight.   
  
“Is everything okay?” Jacob asks.  
  
“You were right,” Daniel says, watching his face closely. “She wouldn’t help.”   
  
Jacob nods his head. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Daniel,” he says. Only he’s not. Daniel can tell. It’s right there to see in plain sight, Jacob’s relief in the reaffirmation of Sam’s uselessness. Her insignificance. Her safety.  
  
“You tried to warn me,” Daniel says through clenched teeth.  
  
Jacob shifts. “Is there anything I can I do to help?” At least he has the decency to sound guilty. That’s more than Gairwyn offered.  
  
“We still need to get our hands on more weapons to fill in the ground troops,” Daniel says, arbitrarily picking one of many, many things on his mental ‘To-Do’ list, because something still isn’t quite right and he can’t put his finger on it yet.  
  
Jacob is distracted, looking up over Daniel’s shoulder again, staring at something behind him in a sort of surprise bordering on horror.  
  
“I might be able to help you with that,” a voice says.  
  
Daniel freezes, his eyes latched onto Jacob’s horrified face. That can’t possibly be who it sounds like. Jacob’s eyes drop away, more guilt, and Daniel has his answer.  
  
Turning slowly, Daniel finds himself face to face with Jack O’Neill.  
  
He’s leaner, much lankier than the man Daniel remembers, his unkempt hair completely grey now. But most out of place of all is the dark tattoo curling around his neck, spreading out like inky fingers from his spine, disappearing under his collar.   
  
The first thing Daniel does is punch him in the face.  
  
Either Jack has lost his edge or he’s purposely taking the hit. He sprawls on his ass, looks up at Daniel, and says, “Well, your left hook has certainly improved.”  
  
Daniel wants to hit him again.  
  
Jacob intercedes, stepping between them to press one hand against Daniel’s chest and offer the other to Jack.  
  
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Daniel says, watching Jacob pull Jack to his feet. “All this damn time. You told us he was dead.”  
  
“I told you Anhur was dead,” Jacob corrects.  
  
And now they’re playing with damn semantics. Daniel swears under his breath, moving a few steps away. God, of all days for this to happen. He was already way at the end of his rope, barely clinging to it for months. He rubs at his forehead in agitation.   
  
“How?” he snaps, falling back on collecting information in a vague attempt not to lose it completely.  
  
“Thor’s Hammer,” Jacob replies without hesitation, maybe trying to demonstrate his willingness to fess up. As if it makes any difference. But then Jacob’s words actually penetrate and Daniel halts mid-step. Thor’s Hammer. Cimmeria.   
  
“Sam,” Daniel says, turning to Jack. “She saved you.”   
  
Jack laughs, low and hard and somehow completely devoid of humor. “Do I look saved to you, Daniel?”  
  
“You look alive.” That’s more than most people from Earth can say these days.  
  
Jack’s lips twist into a smirk, but his eyes are completely flat. “Looks can be deceiving,” he says.  
  
What the fuck is that supposed to mean?  
  
Daniel only realizes he’s said it out loud when Jacob puts a hand on his arm. “Daniel,” he warns, as if he’s stepped over some boundary. As far as Daniel’s concerned though, he’s the only sane person left in this room.  
  
Daniel tries to shrug off the restraining hand, but Jacob just digs his fingers in, his grip like an iron band as he shoves Daniel out of the room. “I get it, Daniel,” he says when they are safely out in the hall. “I really do. But you don’t have the whole picture here.”  
  
Daniel shakes off Jacob’s hand again and this time he lets him go. “Oh, I think I see perfectly clearly, thanks,” Daniel says, pacing away from the doorway.  
  
“Daniel, use your damn head. Where do you think all that intel we gave you _really_ came from? You think the Tok’ra, the handful of us that are left, have been focused on Earth?”  
  
This actually penetrates the blinding anger that’s been building in Daniel all day. “What are you saying?”  
  
Jacob hooks a thumb over his shoulder. “Who exactly do you think discovered Anubis’ plans for Earth?”  
  
Daniel is stunned. “But…”  
  
“Jack has never stopped busting his ass for Earth, not for even a moment,” Jacob says. “Maybe not the way you wanted, but he did it the only way he could. So give him a break.”  
  
“I can’t _believe_ this,” Daniel says, pacing across the width of the hall. His hands are still shaking with adrenaline, his knuckles throbbing from their collision with Jack’s face. A reminder that of all the things Jack might be, at least he’s real. And alive.  
  
“He was a Goa’uld, Daniel.” Jacob sighs, rubbing his head with his hand. “Maybe you think you have some tiny understanding of what that means, but I guarantee it’s even worse than you’ve imagined. He’s had to live with that.”  
  
“Gee, Jacob, I wonder what it’s like to have to live with shitty things done to you by the Goa’uld.”  
  
“Daniel,” Jacob says, shaking his head.   
  
Daniel doesn’t really need to have it pointed out how irrational and petulant he’s being. Kicking at the wall, he leans against it with a sigh, his anger leaking away to an equally bone deep weariness. Being pissed off is exhausting. “I just don’t understand why he couldn’t come back.”  
  
Jacob nods then, reaching out to clap a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “It’s hard to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. Or who doesn’t think there’s any point.”  
  
Something in Jacob’s voice doesn’t settle right with Daniel. “Wait. What aren’t you telling me?”  
  
“You’ll work it out soon enough,” he says in that annoyingly superior voice he’s obviously picked up from the Tok’ra over the years.  
  
“Jacob, cut the crap.”  
  
This brings a ghost of a smile to Jacob’s face.   
  
“What?” Daniel demands.  
  
Jacob shakes his head then, obviously finding something amusing. “Considering you haven’t seen him in five years, you sound an awful lot like him.”   
  
But Daniel doesn’t want to think about how channeling Jack is sometimes the only way he gets through all the horror being thrown at him daily. Doesn’t want to admit that part of him is incredibly relieved to know Jack’s still alive, that he might be on their side once more.  
  
Because none of that negates the fact that he is pissed and plans on staying that way.  
  
“Just tell me,” Daniel says.  
  
Jacob winces, scratching the back of his head. “It’s possible he’s not…completely all there, if you know what I mean. But then again, who is these days?”  
  
Daniel holds up his hands. “Wait. Are you trying say that he’s, what, _insane_?”  
  
Jacob just shrugs. His cavalier treatment of Jack’s dubious mental health is startling. But Jack doesn’t command his only daughter anymore, so maybe he’s allowed to not be overly concerned. She’s nice and safe on her pleasant world. Lucky Jacob.  
  
“Do you trust him?” Daniel asks.  
  
“He’s still Jack O’Neill. Just a little less sane.”  
  
Daniel doesn’t find that particularly comforting.  
  
“Look, Daniel,” Jacob says. “The bottom line here is that you need help and he’s in a position to offer it. We can worry about grudges later, if any of us are still alive.”  
  
Great. Something to look forward to.  
  
Taking a deep breath, Daniel forces himself to walk back into the room, to look Jack O’Neill in the eye and say, “Do you really think you can help us?”  
  
Jack shrugs and for a moment, despite the strange clothes and dead eyes and possible insanity, he feels familiar. “I’m willing to try,” he says.  
  
That’s something at least, right?  
 _  
Some things you just don’t come back from._  
  
Maybe Sam is allowed to be wrong. Or maybe the point is that there isn’t any going back, recovering what was. But that doesn’t mean they can’t still stumble forward, find a new direction. They have to try. Don’t they?  
  
Daniel nods at Jack. “I’ll take you to see Reynolds.”


	3. Omega

“So what was that?” Cam demands moments after materializing on the other side of the wormhole. God, he still remembers when he used to keep count of each and every time he went through a Stargate, back when it was an event worth recording. These days he’s too busy trying to keep his team from self-destructing to bother.  
  
Teal’c gives no sign he’s heard the question, taking off in the direction of a small copse of trees. Great, now Cam can’t even get the one team member he’s got left to listen to him. Cam peers up into the clear blue sky, catching a glimpse of one of the three moons in ascension. There was also a time he would have found living on an alien moon pretty amazing too. Jogging down the last few steps, he takes a sharp right, following after Teal’c.   
  
Pushing past the first screen of trees, Cam’s eyes take a moment to adjust to the shadows. Teal’c waits by a low stone fragment, little more than the base of a marble column, almost completely obscured by undergrowth.  
  
“I did not wish to be present for Daniel Jackson’s inevitable loss of temper,” Teal’c says, opening a panel on the side of the stone.  
  
It takes Cam a moment to realize this is meant as an answer to his original question. “Well, sure,” he says. “No one wants to be around a grumpy Jackson, but should we really have let him run off alone?”  
  
Teal’c still looks supremely unconcerned in a way only he can. “He is with Jacob Carter. There is no reason to be apprehensive about his safety.”  
  
Hard to argue with that kind of certainty, but then again, Cam’s always been a bit of a masochist. He wouldn’t be the leader of SG-1 if he weren’t. After all, his team scientist is glued to the labs so tight that he doubts the guy could be pried away with a trinium crowbar and the promise of a fully functioning Asgard ship. Now Daniel is off on walkabout while he has a temper tantrum. And Teal’c? Hell, Cam gave up trying to order him around five minutes after they first met.   
  
Teal’c nods at the controls, kneeling down to key in their code. Cam sighs, reaches out, and touches the stone. The two of them are enveloped in white light; the forest disappears to be replaced by heavy metal walls arcing above them.  
  
“Don’t you think it’s mean to stick Jacob with Daniel?” Cam asks as green beams sweep out of the chamber walls and scan over them.  
  
Teal’c looks at him, a small smile curling his lips in a way that Cam always finds frighteningly feral. “Perhaps,” he concedes.  
  
“All clear,” a voice announces. The green beams shut off, and on the far side of the chamber, a panel peels back, revealing a door.  
  
“So who you betting on, Daniel or Selmak?” Cam asks.  
  
Teal’c walks out of the room ahead of him, not bothering to acknowledge the quip. Sure as hell never stops Cam from trying.  
  
Out in the hall, one of the younger grease monkeys waits with a jeep to convey them down to command. End of the world, apocalyptic doom on the horizon or not, Cam still thinks it’s beyond bizarre to be whizzing down a Tok’ra-styled tunnel in a good ole American jeep. Then again, weird is pretty much the norm these days.  
  
As if proof of that, Teal’c sits in the backseat clutching the quilt he’d brought out of the house on Cimmeria. Cam hadn’t thought to ask where it came from, though he imagines Sam Carter must have something to do with it, as counterintuitive as that seems. Sam Carter and quilts? But he’d also thought she would help them, so obviously reading about her in mission reports wasn’t enough to get a clear picture.   
  
McKay and Reynolds are waiting for them when the Jeep pulls to a stop outside of command.  
  
“Where’s Sam?” McKay demands before they’ve even had a chance to climb out of the vehicle. “Isn’t she with you?”  
  
Cam looks up over McKay’s shoulder to Reynolds, shaking his head in answer to the question. There’s a flash of disappointment on Reynolds’ face before he nods resignedly. They all knew it had been a long shot.  
  
“And Daniel?” Reynolds asks.  
  
Cam takes a deep breath. “Went to talk with Jacob,” he says, trying not to sound like he’s having a hard time keeping Daniel in line, but he thinks Reynolds sees it anyway.  
  
“What is that?” McKay blurts then, jabbing a finger at the bundle in Teal’c’s arms.  
  
“It is a quilt,” Teal’c replies, but McKay is apparently completely oblivious to the frosty warning in his voice.  
  
“No, not the quilt. What’s on it!” He tugs at it, twisting his head as if trying to view it right side up and failing spectacularly. He glances up at Teal’c with an equal mix of irritation and fear. “Um. Please?”  
  
Teal’c looks over at Reynolds. Receiving a nod, Teal’c rather reluctantly lets McKay have it. “You will take great care,” Teal’c informs McKay as they all follow him into command.  
  
It’s a redundant request, as McKay is already almost reverently spreading it across an open table, his fingers running over the stitches like reading Braille. Then he starts mumbling to himself, his eyes widening moment by moment.  
  
“You want us to leave you two alone?” Cam asks, beginning to feel like he is watching something indecently personal.  
  
“Where exactly did you get this?” McKay demands. Even after all these years, Cam still wonders if McKay is too dense to be scared of Teal’c or if he really somehow feels that comfortable with the warrior. As Teal’c has not seriously maimed McKay yet, Cam supposes it could be the latter.  
  
“It was given to me by Major Carter,” Teal’c says.  
  
“What? Really?” McKay turns back to the quilt, looking, if possible, even more eager. “I need to study this.”  
  
“Why?” Reynolds asks. “What is it?”  
  
“These are equations,” McKay says, his hands spreading wide across the fabric. “And some sort of schematic.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
McKay pauses, tilting his head to one side. “I have no idea.”  
  
Behold, SG-1, Cam’s crack team of experts, the finest Earth has to offer. Or had to offer, rather. He must have sighed audibly because McKay shoots him a look, poking one finger in the air. “Yet,” he amends.  
  
“And the drone weapon?” Reynolds asks.  
  
McKay waves a hand dismissively, already leaning back over the quilt. “Practically done. Just a few tweaks here and there.”  
  
Reynolds crosses his arms, his voice hardening. “I shouldn’t have to remind you that the weapon is your top priority.”  
  
“I _know_ ,” McKay says. “But we asked Sam for help and she gave us this. Don’t you think that means something?”  
  
“Weapon first, mystery equations second,” Reynolds says. “You hear me, McKay?”  
  
McKay sighs. “Yeah, I hear you.”  
  
“Good,” Reynolds says. He sends one last glance at the quilt, and Cam still thinks he looks disappointed. Then again, Reynolds has had the weight of the entire galaxy on his shoulders for two years now. Cam doesn’t envy him that.  
  
Maybe he’d hoped to have Sam Carter back for another reason all together. It must be lonely at the top.  
  
Reynolds disappears back into his office, leaving Cam, Teal’c, and McKay standing around the table staring at Sam Carter’s handiwork.  
  
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” McKay says. Looking down at the quilt, his brow creases. “Why did she stitch this into a quilt?”  
  
Yeah, weird sure has become a relative thing since Cam came to Omega.  
  
* * *  
  
Cam and Teal’c are in the commissary enjoying (‘enjoy’ is another thing that has become rather relative) a fine meal of local road kill stew when Reynolds tracks them down a few hours later. “You two. With me,” he says, not even pausing to see if they follow.  
  
Cam glances at Teal’c and pushes out of his chair, hurrying after his commander. “What’s going on, sir?”  
  
Reynolds looks about as agitated as Cam has ever seen him, which is saying something. Cam has been with Reynolds for some awfully terrible days these last few years. “Daniel’s back,” he says. “And he’s not alone.”  
  
It’s exceedingly rare for anyone to bring an outsider to the Omega site. Their location is the single most heavily guarded secret they have left. The Alpha, the Beta, all their traditional sites, the hubs through which all travel traditionally passed, had been the first sites rooted out and destroyed by Anubis. Omega is the only purely military installation they have left. It’s the place they safeguard technologies, house their fleet of ships. It’s the location they brought Idun, one of the very last Asgard, one actually willing to impart his knowledge to the Tau’ri. Everything depends on this site. If Anubis somehow finds Omega, it will mean the end of the resistance. The end of the war.  
  
“It’s not just Jacob?” Cam asks.   
  
Reynolds’ jaw tightens. “No.”  
  
He doesn’t seem inclined to say anything more, so Cam just jumps into the backseat of the jeep. As they near the quarantine chamber, he notices that the doors are still closed, two armed marines standing on either side. Standard conditions when an arrival doesn’t get the all clear.  
  
Reynolds climbs out of the jeep nodding to the marines. Toggling his radio, he says, “You are clear to open the doors.”  
  
The doors slide open to reveal Jackson, looking calmer than Cam’s seen him in months. And then a second man steps out from behind him.  
  
“Colonel O’Neill,” Reynolds says.   
  
Cam’s mouth actually drops open in astonishment, but in his defense, the guy is supposed to be long dead. A long dead, larger than life hero, from what he’s heard and read.   
  
O’Neill’s lips twitch in what Cam might have called a grin, but there seemed nothing humorous about it. “It’s pretty much just ‘Jack’ these days.”  
  
The guy’s looking rough around the edges, wearing a worn set of brown leather pants and a heavy canvas jacket that seems designed to hide as large a personal arsenal as possible. Under the dark scruff on his jaw is a newly blossoming bruise. He’s slouched, seemingly at ease, but Cam doesn’t mistake the aura of alertness and capability under that. Cam suspects this is the sort of man people only underestimate once, and usually to their detriment.   
  
There isn’t much Air Force left in him at first glance and poor Reynolds looks torn between wanting to salute the guy and have him detained for questioning.  
  
O’Neill eyes the armed guards. “Feel free to stick me in a machine or scan me or whatever, if it will make you feel better,” he offers with a shrug.  
  
“We already did,” Jackson says, hooking a thumb back towards the metal chamber they’ve just left.  
  
O’Neill’s eyebrows lift. “The green beam thingies?” he asks. “Huh. Impressive.” He shifts then, turning at last to regard Teal’c. “Teal’c,” he says with a nod.  
  
Cam glances at Teal’c to gauge his reaction to the reincarnation of his old friend, but the Jaffa’s face is as unreadable as Cam has ever seen. He seems to spend an inordinately long time looking O’Neill over though. Daniel watches the two of them, some sort of frisson in the air, with Cam and Reynolds left standing just outside.   
  
Teal’c eventually inclines his head politely, as if he’s just been introduced to a stranger. “O’Neill,” he says in a tone that can only be described as bland, but something running just underneath makes Cam’s blood run cold. Somehow it might have been better if he’d yelled or pulled a staff weapon.  
  
“You’re Jacob’s secret source,” Reynolds says and it takes Cam a moment to make the connection.  
  
Holy shit. All this damn time, they’ve had Jack O’Neill pulling for them from behind the scenes.  
  
O’Neill neither denies nor confirms the supposition, just reaches out to poke the crystal wall with interest. “Looks like you have quite the operation going here.”  
  
Reynolds takes a step closer to O’Neill, looking him over like he’s searching for something. Maybe for some last vestige of the man he’d known. “We’ve recruited from every culture or group that demonstrates even the slightest chance of helping with the rebellion against Anubis. Tok’ra, Jaffa, Asgard, Hebridian, Langaran, Vitreans. You name them, we’ve got them.”  
  
O’Neill crosses his arms over his chest, something flinty and incredibly intelligent flashing in his eyes. “Except the Lucian Alliance,” he says.  
  
Reynolds nods. “Except the Lucian Alliance.”   
  
O’Neill’s lips press into a thin line as if considering something particularly unpleasant. “I may have a contact,” he says grudgingly.  
  
Reynolds lips curl into a smile of feral satisfaction. “I was hoping you’d say that.”   
  
Cam wonders if it strikes anyone else as oddly coincidental that O’Neill’s ghost is reappearing just at the exact moment they need him most, but if there is one thing he’s learned since joining the Stargate program, it’s that as awful as things can get, there’s just always been something strangely charmed about the Tau’ri. There has to be for them to have survived this long, right?  
  
So to Cam, Jack O’Neill’s sudden reincarnation can only mean one thing.  
  
They are going to win this fight.


	4. Compatriots

There’s a lot more waiting around in the life of a spy and smuggler than Jack expected at first. He’s had years to get used to it though. He’s learned to appreciate stillness.  
  
Daniel, on the other hand, is wound tight, seemingly convinced this is a fool’s errand, that maybe Jack is just yanking his chain. Jack can feel his impatience building and building as they spend three days cooling their heels in seedy tavern after seedy tavern. It’s familiar somehow, but this isn’t really the Daniel Jack remembers.  
  
There isn’t a quicker way to do this though. It’s not like there’s a smuggler’s message board, or cell phones. Sure, they have subspace transmissions, but more often than not people in Jack’s line of work are running silent. You want to find someone? The best way is to stalk them in their haunts.  
  
This particular town is one of his contact’s favorites: bustling, rough, and free of any concerned citizenry that might take offense at the unseemly sides of their business. Occasional violence inevitably happens when you’re trading in secrets and armaments and moonshine. There’s always that one person doing something stupid like trying to short change someone or double cross a partner, or at least stupid enough to get caught doing it. So, yeah, sometimes there’s violence.   
  
Damaging public property or disturbing the peace never really gets you more than a dousing in the public well here. No, it’s the person you’re making a deal with that you need to watch most closely, not the local peacekeepers. If someone’s going to stick a knife in your back, it’s not going to be the lazy, fat cat of a sheriff. Which is probably why Jack’s contact prefers this place. She’s not big on authority figures, at least ones that can’t be bribed. Either that or she just likes the sweet shop on the edge of town that makes amazing pull taffy. Like with most things with Vala Mal Doran, he’s never been quite clear which it is.  
  
Jack first met her six months before Earth died. (That event is his compass point now, no longer breaking everything into before and after the snake, recognizing that the galactic implications of the end of Earth are far greater than Anhur ever hoped to be. The dead snake haunting his mind doesn’t really matter, even if that pisses the parasite off. Jack finds amusement where he can.)  
  
On that particular job almost three years ago, he’d spent the entire time considering shooting Vala when she wasn’t looking and she’d ended up giving him a black eye. Basically a match made in Netu, but against all odds, it works. Somehow. He’s less suspicious of the counterintuitive these days. It’s the things that make sense that always come back to bite him in the ass.  
  
And Vala Mal Doran is anything but logical.  
  
They aren’t really friends. It’s more and yet so much less.  
  
 _“Who was your snake?” he asks, surprising himself as much as her.  
  
Her eyes narrow, her mood shifting dangerously. It’s a bit of a betrayal to speak of it, defying the implicit agreement they made the first time they sat across a table from each other, eyes wide with the mutual sensation crawling up their spines. Kindred spirits maybe, but that doesn’t mean they have anything in common. Or that they ever want to talk about it.  
  
“How long?” he asks when she doesn’t answer the first question.  
  
She looks like she’d happily shoot him if she didn’t need him. And maybe even then if it wouldn’t give away their position.  
  
For some reason, he can’t let this go, not today. “How long?”  
  
“Long enough,” she snaps.  
  
That tells him everything and nothing. But he has to know. “Does it ever still…interfere?”  
  
“What?” She’s looking at him like he’s crazy, but he’s used to that by now. After all, he is.  
  
“You know, up here?” he says, tapping his temple.  
  
There’s a tiny moment when she pales, her shields falling, painful understanding in her eyes, and Jack feels his heart give an erratic beat. Turning away from him, she checks her gun, the topic seemingly dropped. But then, he hears her say, “Only if I let it.”  
  
By the time they make it out with the goods, her shields are firmly back in place, and she’s running her hand up his thigh, offering to sweeten the deal as they sip at their victory drinks.   
  
It’s her way. He can respect that. But he never takes her up on it.   
  
It takes him a while to realize it’s just a test. She doesn’t want it any more than he does, so he has to wonder what brand of sick games her own snake played.  
  
He still leers at her though, calls her sweetheart as he counts out his share under her watchful eye. Like usual, she rips him off a little, but it’s a small price to pay for her comfort, for her endless need to feel like she always comes out slightly on top.  
  
Everyone copes in their own way.  
  
As for Jack, he knows what he saw that moment when all the lies and posturing fell away. He remembers. Remembers and wants to believe.  
  
‘Only if I let it.’_  
  
* * *  
  
Jack and Daniel are walking down the main drag when Vala finally makes her entrance.  
  
“Jack,” she exclaims, appearing out of the crowd and taking a running leap at him. Jack bites back a groan as he almost stumbles under her unexpected weight, knowing that she’ll happily take umbrage at his uncouth insinuation that she’s heavy if he lets it show. That’s usually worth at least an extra five percent.  
  
Equilibrium regained and legs wrapped securely around his waist, she grins down at him. “Hi.”  
  
“Hey, sweetheart,” Jack says. “Still alive, I see.”  
  
“Of course,” she says, head tilting to one side. “And you? Still crazy, I hope.”  
  
“As always,” he replies.  
  
Flicking her hair over her shoulder, she winks at him. “So, is this a business call, or have you finally decided you just can’t live without me?”  
  
“Jack,” Daniel hisses from behind him. Frankly, Daniel has kept his silence for twice as long as Jack expected. “As much fun as this is to watch…,” he drawls, his voice dripping with sarcasm.  
  
Jack isn’t sure what he’s done to piss Daniel off again already, but he doesn’t really care either. “Daniel,” he says, easing Vala back down to her feet. “This is Vala Mal Doran.”  
  
Vala looks wary now, her growing alarm firmly hidden under a fake, bright smile that most men are too dumb to see past. He can’t quite tell if Daniel is falling for it or not.  
  
“He’s looking for some armaments,” Jack says. “I told him you were the one to see.”  
  
“You’re Tau’ri?” she guesses, looking Daniel over.   
  
“Yes,” Daniel says.  
  
There’s the briefest flash of a pause Jack recognizes as Vala working out her variables, stacking risk against reward. “Well,” she says, her hand sliding into the crook of Daniel’s arm, “buy me a drink, handsome, and I’ll see what I can do.”   
  
Jack grabs her other hand, the one moving freely while the first distracts. “And no robbing him blind either, sweetheart.”  
  
Daniel pulls her hand away from his arm, letting out an aggravated sigh. “Can we just get this done?” he asks, pacing ahead of them towards the nearest tavern.  
  
Vala slides Jack a sharp glare as they follow behind. “You sure know how to ruin a girl’s fun,” she pouts.  
  
Jack smirks. “That’s what they’re always telling me.”  
  
* * *  
  
Jack rolls his glass between his palms, his eyes making another circuit around the crowded room, automatically searching for familiar faces, friendly or otherwise, and picking out any suspicious behavior, anything that might trigger the need for quick escape. It’s second nature now to be this paranoid, a mutation of his training. The enemy rarely shows up in easily spotted uniforms or clunking armor anymore.  
  
Daniel and Vala are doing the majority of the talking, a rapid back and forth that Jack isn’t paying much attention to. He’s not really here to broker the deal for them. He’ll make sure Vala doesn’t rip Daniel off, but other than that, Jack is pretty much flying second seat.   
  
He has bigger issues on his mind.  
  
Jack has to admit that watching Vala and Daniel dance around each other is one of the most amusing things he’s seen in years. There was a time a woman as forthright and, how can he put it, _vulgar_ as Vala would have had Daniel stammering and clueless. This new Daniel gives as much as he gets, parrying each suggestive purr with hard-edged sarcasm, not allowing her an inch of rope to hang him with. And rather than being defeated or annoyed, Vala seems enlivened by it, something gleaming in her eye that he’s rarely had occasion to see.  
  
She’s still suspicious though, and isn’t letting herself be completely distracted by her fun new playmate. She’s too good at her job for that. Every few minutes her eyes dart to Jack where he silently sips his ale. She’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, can feel it already, he imagines. He lets her stew.  
  
It takes them thirty minutes to iron out the particulars, only about twice as long as it probably should have. Jack drops some currency on the table and follows the still bickering pair back out into the street.   
  
“Well,” Vala is saying, flashing her blinding smile, the one she uses to seal deals. “I think this will be a very lucrative arrangement on both sides.”  
  
“There’s one more thing,” Jack says, pausing on the sidewalk.  
  
She tenses, the bright smile slipping.  
  
“They need a meeting with Netan.”  
  
Jack barely catches the fury on Vala’s face before her fist connects with his jaw.  
  
It’s a jab more than anything, but he still stumbles a bit. He knows if she really wanted to do damage, he’d be on the ground bleeding. He rubs at the sore spot, trying to ignore the snicker coming from Daniel’s direction. People are getting way too much of a kick out of hitting him these days.  
  
“You done?” he asks, peering at Vala.  
  
“You’re stepping over the damn line here, O’Neill,” she hisses, just as pissed off as he knew she would be. He’s putting her at huge risk, asking her to take sides. Taking sides is usually the quickest way to end up dead. Or worse: powerless.  
  
“Will you excuse us a moment?” Jack says to Daniel, grabbing Vala’s arm and forcibly steering her a short distance away. “Okay, I let you take a shot at me so now you have to listen to what I have to say.”  
  
She tries to tug her arm away, but Jack just digs his fingers in harder. “I thought you’d realize by now that no one out here gives a damn about the Tau’ri,” she spits.  
  
“This isn’t about Earth,” he says.  
  
“Bullshit.”  
  
Jack sighs, dropping her arm. “Fine. So it is about Earth. But what the hell do you care as long as it’s also about getting rid of Anubis? I never took you for someone who gave a shit about intentions. Only results.”  
  
“What do I care about Anubis?” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “He happens to be good for business.”  
  
Anubis’ slaughter of the system lords has certainly opened up a power vacuum in large areas of space. The underground couldn’t flourish, let alone exist, without it. But Jack isn’t stupid enough to think that’s going to work in their favor permanently.  
  
“Maybe,” Jack concedes. “But how long will that last, really? You think he’s just going to look the other way while we continue our business affairs? He won’t be happy until every last corner of this galaxy has been ground under his heel. Until anyone and anything that might be able to stand up to him is gone.”  
  
Vala scoffs. “I’ve heard that before. From dozens of Goa’uld. They’ve had their chance for thousands and thousands of years. None of them ever pulled it off. And you and I know better than anyone how weak they are.”  
  
“We also both know there is something different about Anubis.” Even Anhur, as useless as he is, is enough to confirm this.  
  
Vala looks like she wants to deny it, but Jack stares her down, daring her to bullshit him. She grimaces, her eyes drop away, reluctantly conceding the point. “Fine,” she bites out, “but what makes you think the Tau’ri, of all people, have even the slightest chance of pulling this off?”  
  
Jack glances back at Daniel. He seems to remember there was a time they believed in miracles, damn the odds. Is this really any different?  
  
“Because they have to,” he says.  
  
“Don’t feed me that sentimental drivel,” she blusters, but the sharpness is gone from her voice. Jack’s one of the few people who can see it, but he knows Vala is no way near as cynical as she pretends.  
  
And the Tau’ri are exactly the sort of lost-cause misfits she can relate to if she can get out from behind her nearly impenetrable shield of self-preservation long enough to see that. It’s kept her alive this long, but there’s a time and place for throwing all caution to the wind and diving in.  
  
This may just be that moment.  
  
Jack smirks at her. “Just think, once Anubis is gone, there won’t be any Goa’uld left to take his place. Nothing but chaos and plenty of opportunities for free enterprise.”  
  
She rolls her eyes at him. They both know the vague possibility of future profits is nowhere near worth it. If she, or the Lucian Alliance, throws their lot in with them and they lose, Anubis will no longer ignore them. He’ll slaughter them.  
  
When she doesn’t take another swing at him for even suggesting it, he knows she’s actually considering it.   
  
“Damn you, Jack O’Neill,” she says as she turns away. “Damn you for making me want to believe.”  
  
Jack’s pretty sure that’s supposed to be his line.


	5. A Song For Our Fathers

Daniel watches Jack and Vala where they’re standing a few paces away, just far enough that he can’t hear what they’re saying. They’re leaning into each other with the obvious ease of two people who know each other well. Of course, Vala also looks pissed enough to pull her gun on Jack.  
  
Daniel can relate to that.  
  
Someone bumps into Daniel from behind, and, as Daniel turn to look at him, the half-muttered curse dies in the stranger’s throat. He stops talking mid-word and quickly ducks back into the flow of people on the sidewalk. There was a time such behavior might have seemed strange, but Daniel is getting used to it.  
  
He doesn’t miss the way people give him space, the bustle of the street diverting around him like he’s a stone in a river. He’s resigned to the looks he gets from people when they realize he’s Tau’ri. He’s one part pariah, one part legend. And everyone treats him as if his people are already in the past tense, like he’s a walking ghost.  
  
Like he’s cursed.  
  
“Okay, handsome,” Vala says, appearing without warning by his elbow. “Give me three days and twenty weights of naquadah and we’ve got ourselves a deal.”  
  
“Five up front,” Jack interrupts, right on her heels. He hands over their payment. “The balance when you deliver.”  
  
Vala’s lips press together, but eventually she nods, taking the case, hefting it as if to judge the weight. Then she focuses her attention back on Daniel and gives him a lop-sided grin, her fingers dancing a pattern across his chest. “I’ll be in touch,” she promises with a sly wink.  
  
She’s gone before he can think of a suitable response. He watches her as she disappears back into the crowd. “So this is what you’ve been doing all these years?” he asks Jack.  
  
Jack slides him a look. “I’m not sleeping with her, if that’s what’s got your panties in a twist.”  
  
Daniel glances up at him sharply.   
  
Jack’s eyes narrow. “You don’t have any right to tell me how to live my damn life, Daniel,” he snaps, walking off.  
  
“That’s abundantly clear,” Daniel says to his back. With a sigh, he follows Jack into the general store across the street. Jack is already talking with the storekeep when he catches up. Daniel is pretty sure that the crate on the counter next to them is the one he saw Jacob packing a few days before.  
  
Daniel listens to Jack run through a large list of supplies. The pile on the counter grows quickly, full of staples like flour and cured meats, but also household items such as lamp oil that he can’t imagine Jack needs unless he’s got another cabin stashed away on a planet somewhere.  
  
“Thread?” Daniel asks as the storekeep adds a few spools of various colors.  
  
Jack ignores him. “You get any of those preserves from Nash? The nettleberry?”  
  
The storekeep nods, a wide smile barely visible under his heavy beard. “Just came in last week. Got a few jars left.”  
  
“Great,” Jack says. “I’ll take one jar of the preserves and that will do it.”  
  
“Okay,” the storekeep says, marking something down in a ledger. He pats the crate. “I’ll get these to Laura.”  
  
Jack quickly packs two boxes full of supplies, unceremoniously dumping one into Daniel’s arms, taking the slightly smaller one himself. “See you next month, Cyrus,” Jack says over his shoulder as he trudges back out into the street.   
  
Daniel shifts his load and decides against asking questions Jack clearly has no interest in answering. At least until they hit the outskirts of town where Jack’s ship waits for them. Truthfully, it isn’t much to look at, but Jack has obviously taken a lot of time to optimize it because there are systems and modifications that Daniel’s never seen before, not that he pays much attention to that kind of thing. If he hadn’t seen Jack buried in various systems on the way out here, he might not have noticed that among Jack’s many new skill sets, grease monkey seems chief among them.  
  
Following Jack into the ship’s hold, Daniel watches him put the boxes into another larger crate partially full of fabric, and now he gets it. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Jack has been taking care of her this whole time, but somehow it makes a difference knowing that Jack O’Neill isn’t so changed that he leaves his people behind.   
  
Glancing around the hold, for the first time Daniel _really_ looks at the space Jack calls home these days. The majority of the space is designated for cargo, so Daniel hasn’t spent much time here. Other than the flight out to this planet, they’ve been staying in a boarding house in town while they waited for Vala to show up.  
  
His eye is caught by the small alcove at the rear, partially covered by a thin curtain. Daniel can just make out a narrow trunk bed with a pile of what might be star charts and a few worn paperbacks near the foot. The sparse belongings paint a painfully bleak picture of a Spartan existence. Whatever the truth is of what Jack O’Neill has been doing the last five years, it certainly hasn’t been comfortable, or easy, and Daniel just can’t stay angry, no matter how much he wants to.  
  
Turning back to the crate, Daniel finds Jack watching him, as if daring him to comment, or maybe simply waiting for the next fight.   
  
“Why come back now?” Daniel asks, not a critique or a heated complaint, just a simple question. Probably the most important question.  
  
Jack seems surprised, but doesn’t pretend not to understand the question. He just looks down at the crate as if considering his answer. Eventually he shrugs. “Because it looks to me like this is it,” he says. “Am I wrong?”  
  
Daniel shakes his head. He’s not wrong.  
  
“I heard about Abydos,” Jack says after a lengthy silence.  
  
Daniel flinches. He manages to forget, sometimes. Letting his mind fool him that it’s still waiting out there for him somewhere. That he hadn’t led them to their deaths.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Jack says, still looking down at his hands so he doesn’t see something he’s not supposed to.  
  
It’s such a familiar ruse that Daniel feels a horrid sort of deja vu, time wrapping around on itself. Maybe Jacob’s right. He’s still Jack O’Neill. And maybe none of them were really sane to begin with. There was a time they’d been deluded enough to think they could win this, after all, wasn’t there?  
  
“I worry about Teal’c,” Daniel confesses before he can give it too much thought.   
  
Now Jack turns, confusion on his face. Another thing that hasn’t changed: they always assume nothing can touch Teal’c. Except maybe Sam, he thinks, remembering her fingers on Teal’c’s face, the way Teal’c stepped away from her. He thinks Sam saw it. Recognized what no one else could.  
  
“I think he’s beginning to regret this.”  
  
Teal’c should have been pissed at Jack for deserting, or shown at least something other than sheer indifference. They both know that.  
  
“Ry’ac?” Jack asks, his voice a shade lower than normal. Daniel wonders if that’s guilt weighing his tongue down. God knows there’s more than enough to go around these days.  
  
Daniel nods. “And Bra’tac. And Chulak. Imhotep’s betrayal of the rebels. I don’t know when it began really.”  
  
Jack crosses his arms, leaning one hip against the crate. “Is it as bad as they say?”  
  
“Bad enough,” Daniel admits.  
  
The Jaffa rebellion was supposed to be the cornerstone of the Goa’uld’s destruction. But Anubis foresaw the threat they could become. He snuck in a minor compatriot as a mole, a lure he used to stamp out as many renegades at one time as he could. Then he stepped up his production of mindless drones with only one directive: to serve Anubis.  
  
The last of his loyal Jaffa he threw into bloody, pointless battles.  
  
Anubis is steadily driving the Jaffa towards extinction.  
  
But the Goa’uld’s dependence on the drones may be their one chance to find his damn Achilles’ heel.  
  
Rodney is back at base right now, working on it. It’s the first tiny glimmer of hope Daniel’s seen in years. It’s what finally drove him to try to bring Sam back. The final pull, the last bet, all chips thrown in.  
  
“All or nothing,” Daniel mutters.  
  
Jack nods.  
  
* * *  
  
The grove is quiet, none of the women are training this late in the day, but rather attending to chores in their camp. The sun has not yet begun its decent behind the mountains so beats down upon Teal’c as he moves through his routine with his staff, the movements proscribed and imprinted on his brain since childhood.  
  
As he turns, sweeping the staff high across his body, he catches sight of the woven patterns hanging in the trees out of the corner of his eye. Honor, diligence, and pride, they read. He stabs his weapon at each; short, blunt thrusts morphing into smooth, parrying retreats. Boldly strapped to the widest tree at the head of the grove is a pattern worn faint with time, but still legible: faith.  
  
Teal’c’s grip slips, the head of the staff dropping to drag jarringly against the dirt.  
  
As he recovers, he hears the heavy tread of a foot purposely dragged to announce the approach of an ally. There is only one here who would seek him out.  
  
“I was not expecting you again so soon,” Ishta observes as she steps out of the forest. He has, in fact, not seen her in many months, though his visits here coordinated purposely in her absence are slightly more regular. She probably means to remind him that she is perfectly aware of his movements.  
  
Ishta never says anything without purpose after all, without five meanings layered underneath the words. There was a time he found this fascinating, a tangled depth that he would have gladly spent a lifetime unraveling. Only nothing is as it should be, she least of all, and there have been fewer and fewer words between them. Teal’c could confirm what she is insinuating, that this place has become nothing but a worthy excuse for him, a default burden to explain his absences, to make his lies to Daniel Jackson slightly more palatable.   
  
_“You aren’t coming with us?” Daniel Jackson asks, O’Neill just behind him.  
  
Teal’c doesn’t pause in his packing, reaching for his small case of tretonin, slipping the purple liquid into his bag. “As I informed Colonel Reynolds, I have a previous engagement on Hak’tyl.”   
  
With O’Neill there, watching them both closely, Daniel Jackson does not dare call his bluff._  
  
Ishta knows very well his time here ceased to be about her long ago.  
  
“Would you care to spar with something that can actually fight back?” she asks, picking up one of the training staves, twirling it in her fingers with deftness that Teal’c can’t help but admire. He lets himself pretend, just for a moment, that they are nothing more than warriors bred of grace and skill, a mere pair among millions.  
  
But then he remembers. Those millions are whittled down to struggling handfuls.  
  
As for Ishta, she and her kind only survive because they are abominations, mutations no Goa’uld or First Prime could dream into existence. Pariahs who perhaps ever would have stood apart from their brethren, never to be accepted. Women taking up arms not out of necessity, but out of desire, drive. Women looting symbiotes from fellow Jaffa, back when there had been Jaffa to steal from. Yet they survive, these ex-priestesses and women who will not be wives, thrive even, while the rest of their kind wither and die, just like their customs, just like their strength.  
  
Just like him.  
  
“I know why you are here,” she says as she circles him, looking for an opening. He wonders when they became incapable of words without weapons between them. “I know why you come here again and again.”  
  
She lunges at him and there is no more time for words, only action and reaction, the dance of attack and retreat. Teal’c has let his training with the staff slip, depending more and more upon the weapons of the Tau’ri. He knows she sees this because her attacks sneak unerringly under his rough edges, pressing at his weak points, yet she always holds back just the slightest bit, goading him with his weaknesses.  
  
He parries, but never out of anger, no passion marring his serene surface.  
  
Only when she tires of the game, her futile attempt to draw some form of reaction out of him, does she finally sweep his feet, winding him a little as his back slams into the ground. She is upon him, pinning him down before he can regain his feet, her staff across his chest.  
  
“You still believe the drug makes you weak, less of a warrior,” she says, passion sparking in her eyes as she leans on the staff, shifting up and pressing it against his neck. “But you are wrong. Your weakness is of your own making.”  
  
He shifts his hips to gain leverage and winds his legs through hers to buck her weight off of him, but she is ready for the maneuver, rolling with the movement like quicksilver, turning his momentum back against him. She raps the head of her staff against his thigh, a tight, stinging reprimand that reminds him of frigid days in the snow with Bra’tac by his side, the teacher patiently molding Teal’c into a warrior of free thought and compassion, while laying on him a burden it would take nearly a century to fully understand.  
  
The very thought of Bra’tac should bring resentment or grief or even the warmth of familiarity, but Teal’c feels nothing, nothing but the crunch of non-existent ice against his skin.  
  
Ishta stares down at him, her expression hard, breathing slightly labored, but in her eyes something else entirely as she searches his face. For a moment, she looks at him as she used to, like she might reach for him, but it is gone just as quickly.  
  
“There is a difference between controlling one’s emotions and attempting to eradicate them,” she says, rolling off him and onto her feet in one smooth motion. “You have become stone.”  
  
She tosses the staff down by his side, and he doesn’t miss the flick of disgust in the motion, the way her wrist snaps with impatience as she releases it. “Stone makes a poor bedmate. And an even poorer warrior.”  
  
She holds his gaze and as the moments stretch silent between them, he sees the merest break in her haughty mask, a true flash of her anguish and bitter disappointment before she turns to leave.   
  
“O’Neill returned today,” Teal’c says, finally finding his voice in the wake of that burning glimpse.  
  
She stops, something tightening in her shoulders, but when she turns, he sees nothing but her resolve. “As you always suspected he would one day.”  
  
Teal’c pushes up into a sitting position, feeling the protest of muscles unaccustomed to the rigors of training. “Yes.”  
  
Her eyes slip past him, staring into the distance. “So it has finally come, this time of reckoning.”  
  
They’d spoken often of this day in the beginning, back in those long lazy hours of night when they would lay with their limbs entwined, voices lowered to impassioned whispers of a future for which they would fight. Together. He remembers feeling that no matter how rough the path became they _would_ find a way. Such surety.   
  
But that was before. Back when Jaffa still filled this galaxy. Back when there was still hope.   
  
“My people and I, we will fight,” Ishta pledges, bright and golden in the sunlight and he senses that somehow she still believes. Despite everything that has happened, she still believes they can be free. It’s seductive and tempting, and in that moment, he finally sees what maybe he should have long before. It’s clear to him as he sits in the dirt and looks up at her that though he may be nothing but a relic of a decaying past, she and her people are the future. Not abominations, not cast-outs, but the last fragile survival of a once proud people.  
  
Above him, Ishta shifts, the sunlight catching the edge of her cheek as her eyes meet his. “Will you?”  
  
Maybe there is one small chance left, Teal’c thinks, one treacherous, narrow, uphill path still to be attempted. Maybe that is faith enough.  
  
He holds out a hand to Ishta.  
  
She helps him to his feet.


	6. Down So Long

When Sam first heard of Earth’s final fate, she found it hard to feel much of anything. The five years since she’s last seen it are a blur, soft and indistinct and comforting. Easy.   
  
But not this day. Today is full of sharp edges and dangerous words and brittle lies that catch and tear on her skin, refusing to slide by unnoticed.  
 _  
Some things you just don’t come back from._  
  
There are voices out in the yard, the pitched tones climbing and falling and loaded with things left unsaid and she’s caught in them like a current, so she steps out the rear of her house to submit to the pull, concealing herself in darkness and foliage like any other shadow, following the sound of footfalls stomping down the mountainside.  
  
She knows these men. Or she knew them. Or maybe they just knew her.  
  
The third man though…the stranger. He doesn’t feel right. That’s not his space to fill, striding there in front, shoulders squared against responsibility. Because _he_ would have returned to Earth... Wouldn’t he? But no, he’s been replaced too.   
  
That’s not right.  
  
Her father came, it’s how she knows. He must have used the failsafe she’d given him. The one she won’t use herself. But he hadn’t returned to Earth.  
  
 _Things you don’t come back from._  
  
She’d known, that sunny day on the mountainside with bruises fresh upon her flesh--so familiar… She’d known he would never come back. It might be the last concrete fact she knows for certain until today. The day Daniel comes.  
  
She watches them approach the gate, watches the way the three men exist in their own separate spheres, so much space shoved between them that they may as well be strangers. She watches Daniel’s jaw, the agitated play of muscles and tendons, a fire barely contained. She watches Teal’c’s fingers trail over her stitches almost reverently, but uncomprehending.  
  
Only the stranger is still, his back bowed slightly as Daniel dials an address she doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t. Can’t.  
  
 _Can’t go back._  
  
The wind shifts, blowing in her face and she blinks against the intrusion, her eyes watering. She turns away from the gate.  
  
Walking back up to her house, her solitary footsteps scatter the dust, erasing all evidence of any other passing feet. She sits in her chair in her little house and stares at the empty spot on her wall and tries to forget the feel of paper and words under her fingers.  
 _  
Can’t._  
  
* * *  
  
The blank space nags at her, a giant hole on her wall where cloth used to hang. The emptiness lingers long after she covers it with a different pattern, a new quilt, just not the right one.   
  
She feels exposed, unprotected, restless without it, things creeping up on her in the dark. She doesn’t understand why. From the basket next to her chair, she pulls out a blue square of fabric, the final piece to the now-absent quilt.  
  
It wasn’t on purpose. She never consciously made a decision. The needle and thread are about necessity, about repairing and covering and keeping herself clothed. They are constancy.  
  
They are control.  
  
She learned at the knee of Gairwyn’s eldest daughter, her stitches clumsy, the children gathered by her side. They’re a bit of a blur, those days since he left. The way she likes them.  
  
She remembers that one day fabric appeared in the supplies her father brings. It keeps her hands busy. The numbers didn’t happen until after he came again with words about Earth and its ending, full of facts and numbers, only they were after the fact. Facts that can’t be altered.  
  
The first time she looked down and saw the fabric covered with numbers and facts and equations to a universe she tries to forget, she dropped it to the floor, walking a wide berth around it for a week. But then the numbers just built up, threatening to burst out through her skin, so she gave them that one square and then another, allowing that one tiny piece of her to spill out over it when she feels like she might rupture. It keeps things quiet that way, and she thinks maybe one day she’ll find the bottom of that well. Maybe it will dry up if she tries hard enough.  
  
For two years she worked on it, ripping thread and pulling numbers, reworking as she went, a puzzle made of fabric squares, moved around step by step, an anchor for her listing existence.  
  
She’s adrift without them now that they are gone.   
  
Twisting the one remaining square in her fingers, rumpling the fabric, she peers at the numbers from a different angle, her eyes sharpened by words she tries to forget. Things slip, tumble, falter into place. She sees it.  
  
 _We really need your help._  
  
She drops the square to the floor.  
  
* * *  
  
 _She’s in the forest.  
  
Sunlight filters down through the thick trees, painting yellow patterns on the springy earth, rich with loam and decaying leaves. There’s the crunch of a twig in front of her, and she drops to a crouch, her weapon tucked in tight against her shoulder, her eyes scanning the landscape in front of her.  
  
“Sam,” someone says, and she spins to her left, calming her breathing and stretching her senses as far as she can, weapon still firmly in place.  
  
There. A flash of dark blue in the trees, a faint voice she should know.  
  
“Daniel?” she asks, pushing to her feet to follow. She bobs and weaves through the thick trunks until they thin out, falling away to reveal a large clearing with a stone platform built at its center. On top standing proudly in the clear sunshine is a Stargate.  
  
“Sam,” a voice says again, and she turns, almost stumbling over a DHD.  
  
Teal’c catches her arm, steadying her. “Are you all right, Major Carter?”  
  
Something is not right. “Are you?” she asks.  
  
He bows slightly, a Cheshire grin on his face that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I would appreciate your company.”  
  
“Sam!”  
  
She jerks. Daniel stands in front of the wormhole, nearly indistinct against the sea of rippling blue behind him. “Are you even listening?”  
  
Shaking her head, Sam takes a step toward him. “Where are we going?”  
  
“I asked you if you recognized this,” Daniel says, pressing something cool and solid into her hand.   
  
She doesn’t look down at the object, just feels the weight of it in her hand. “We’re right behind you,” she promises as Daniel and Teal’c step through.  
  
A hand on her arm. “Come on, Carter. Let’s get moving. You know how Hammond gets when we make him wait.”  
  
She tries to turn, tries to lift that heavy weight in her hand, but she’s rooted to the ground. His grip is hard on her arm, squeezing her bones, but when she looks down there is nothing, only perfect, clear, unmarred skin.  
  
“Go! Now!”  
  
She turns towards his panicked voice, legs finally breaking free, hands reaching, but there is nothing there. Even the forest is gone, replaced with a black pit, a gaping cliff, the complete absence of everything, crawling towards her across the clearing, beginning to tug at the hem of her skirt.   
  
The gate dims as if loosing opacity moment by moment.  
  
Something cold latches onto her ankle, and she opens her mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.  
  
“Carter!” his voice shouts, insistent against her ear._  
  
Sam gasps into wakefulness, blinking rapidly against the light invading her room, the sun bright and high in the sky outside her window. The echoes of the dream vibrate through her mind and she squeezes her eyes shut, fingers pressing against her temples.  
  
Dreams are another thing she left behind five years ago. They don’t belong here.  
  
They don’t matter. They can’t.  
  
She walks the rest of the day in a haze, only it’s not one full of indistinct comforts, but contrasts, the dream jarring against her daily routine. Something isn’t right. She wants to believe the dream is the culprit, the one that doesn’t belong, the foreign thing to be ignored, but she just can’t quite settle on anything.  
  
She finds herself at Linna’s door, staring in at the cozy interior, breathing the familiar smell, and she thinks maybe she will be okay in this space. Nothing can reach her here. Not even the dreams.  
  
But then the unexpected happens.  
  
“I dreamed last night.”  
  
The words slip out in an unfamiliar voice, her throat moving well before thought or impulse. Unfamiliar either because she sounds different or it’s just been so long that she’s forgotten the sound of her own voice.  
  
Linna, sharing a table with her middle child, betrays no surprise at the end of Sam’s five-year silence. She simply leans down to her daughter to whisper some command in her ear, the child rising from the table and exiting the house. Linna then turns her full attention to Sam, her hands folded in her lap, calm and steady as if it were any other morning Sam came to this space. “And of what did you dream?” she asks.  
  
Sam shifts, looking down at her hands where they’re twisted in the fabric of her skirt. The words are hard to find, thick and weighty on her tongue. “I dreamed. Of before.”  
  
Daniel. Teal’c.  
  
 _Him_.  
  
“Was it pleasant?” Linna asks, pushing to her feet.  
  
It was…real. It was _them_. But pleasant? Or horrible? She can’t tell. She’s shivering.  
  
 _Can’t. Can’t. Can’t._  
  
“What is this?” Sam asks, panic squeezing her throat, pitching the words.  
  
Linna steps closer, her hand brushing across Sam’s forehead and down her cheek as if she is one of her children. And maybe she has been, these long, long years. “I believe you are waking up,” she says.  
  
But Sam doesn’t want to wake up, to defrost. She just wants her dreamless nights and mindless tasks. Doesn’t want to have to think, to consider. To remember.  
  
There is a noise behind them, and Sam spins, heart in her throat. Gairwyn stands in the doorway, a basket in her arms, the muted green showing between the slats whispering the secret of its contents to Sam.   
  
“We never expected you to remain with us forever,” Linna explains.  
  
 _You can’t hide here forever, Sam._  
  
Her hands clench. She can try.  
  
But Gairwyn blocks her escape, the woman and the package that she never wanted to lay eyes upon again. Sam shakes her head, stumbling back a few steps closer to Linna, to her soft hands and comforting scents.  
  
From the start Sam has been with Linna, attaching herself to her household and the sheer foreign appeal of this woman’s life. Nothing in Linna’s house reminds Sam of anything. At the most, maybe those early hazy years with her mother, and isn’t it a bit unexpected that those previously unpalatable memories are now the only ones she allows? Maybe precisely because they are hazy and incomplete and if she stares out of focus at Linna and her family just right, she almost believes that this place has always been her home, her reality.  
  
It’s Gairwyn, sharp, unbending Gairwyn, that she studiously avoids, and if either mother or daughter notice, they never comment. Gairwyn always grants Sam the space she craves. Until today.  
  
Staring at her now, Sam isn’t reminded of her team, of their missions and close calls and great discoveries, but rather reminded far too much of herself, the woman she’d been before she let Anhur strip that from her. Before she’d allowed herself to be broken.  
  
 _No, no, no_ , she thinks, fingers digging into her thighs as she fights the foreign press of tears.  
  
She’d thought it laughable at the time, Anhur’s boast that she wasn’t strong enough to survive. She remembers that now, his vile prophecy she hadn’t been prepared for, the way he ferreted out her most heavily guarded secrets, ripped pieces of her away until she was unrecognizable even to herself.  
  
She survived, believed that to be enough. But is survival really the same as living?  
  
 _This isn’t who you are…_  
  
And her words, her thoughts and voice, that last act of defiance…had it really been rebellion? Or had she freely given him her one last connection to anyone or anything?  
  
Had she…capitulated?  
  
The possibility sickens her, physically doubles her over until she’s kneeling on the floor, but the sensation is still weaker than the fear that closes her throat, the subsumed rage and guilt she’s never allowed herself to feel, so scared that it might have the power to erase the things most important to her.  
  
Better that they be ignored than destroyed.  
  
Better not to feel or think.  
  
Better to lose herself in the mindless stitch and the animated chatter of Linna’s daughters.   
  
Today there is neither, only Gairwyn and her unavoidable associations.  
  
The warrior is dressed much as she ever is, leather leggings tight over thighs used to exertion, arms built for lifting a sword, the stature and posture of a woman who has lived through the loss of father and husband and son, a woman who easily stepped in to fill the gap, a sword maiden of Thor, wise, powerful, slow to anger, and never, ever broken. Not even by the slaughter of her people, a fate dealt to her by Sam’s own hands, by SG-1. Yet never a trace of bitterness, just calm surety born of faith in the greater plan, in Thor. Only now does Sam realize the woman’s steadiness is equally born of her own confidence in her abilities as much as a distant, benevolent god.  
  
Would such faith have saved Sam? Hadn’t she, too, once believed?  
 _  
We really need your help._  
  
She’s terrified she can’t be what they need. But is it better to try and fail than to never try at all?  
  
 _He doubts you are strong enough to survive._  
  
She doesn’t want to capitulate.  
  
She can’t.  
  
Gairwyn crosses the room, pausing to crouch down by Sam, placing the basket next to her knee.  
  
Sam tries to forget, to close her eyes and breathe the scent of Linna’s home, the life she’s tried to steal her way into. But all she can feel is the hard edge of the basket against her knee, the one containing five-year-old garments infused with half-forgotten scents.  
 _  
We really need your help._  
  
Sam’s hand lifts up over the edge and down into the pile of fabric. She stares at it there against a sea of color. Green.   
  
And she remembers.   
  
She’d worn green the last day she set foot on her planet and again the day she leveled Anhur’s world into nothing more than smoke and ash. She thinks maybe she can smell it still. Burnt flesh and the tang of blood. Sweat and desperation.   
  
She’d thought them lost, forgotten.  
  
Lifting the shirt, she finds a careful patch of fabric on the shoulder that doesn’t quite match the rest, Linna’s even stitches anchoring it in place. Ragged pieces brought back together. Never quite as they were, but holding.   
  
Holding long enough to be of use again.  
  
Looking up to meet Gairwyn’s gaze for the first time in five years, Sam finds something in her eyes like understanding. “Thank you,” she says.  
  
Gairwyn nods, her hand firm on Sam’s. “You are welcome.”  
  
And so it begins.  
  
* * *  
  
Standing in front of the DHD, Sam forces the secrets back to her surface, the combination to a path she never thought to walk again. She touches the glyphs, sharp and cold under fingers used to the soft forgiveness of fabric.  
  
Stepping into the event horizon, she feels herself torn into tiny pieces, nothing more than energy flying through the stars, and when she’s put back together on the other side, she wonders if the wormhole can tell, can sense that there’s less to her than there used to be. Wonders if it makes a difference.  
  
She breathes rattling, dry desert air, and sits upon the steps in her ungainly, but familiar uniform, the blunt edges of her shortened hair pulled back into a ponytail. And in her fingers, the final piece.  
  
She waits. And when he finally appears, concern on his face, her name spoken as a fractured question, she stands. Her tongue sweeps across her lips, the words building and compressing in her throat like the numbers, vying for escape.  
  
“Yeah, Dad,” she says. “It’s me.”


	7. Patchwork

As a baby, Sam’s first word wasn’t ‘mama’ or ‘dada’ or any repetitive nonsense misconstrued as meaningful by overly eager parents. No, nothing so mundane for Jacob’s Sammie. Ready to speak her first word, she looked up at him towering over her and thrust out her arms.   
  
“Up,” she demanded, fearless from the very beginning. Even then not content to see the world from ground level.  
  
Today it’s like hearing her first word all over again, only now he’s the one untouched by the crawl of time and she looks older than ever.   
  
“Yeah, Dad. It’s me,” she says.  
  
Jacob feels that same thrill of pride followed quickly by pure terror, and wonders for a moment if he’s giving meaning to nonsense, to words that have none.  
  
Her words are an illusion, he knows, the deceptive sheen of a desert oasis on the horizon. It’s tempting to take her words as a sign of a miracle, of the sudden resurgence of his long lost daughter. He wants to believe they have the power to cancel out all those long silent years between, to erase the horrors that stole her words away in the first place. He would be happy to hear them if this were the case.  
  
As it is, she’s still at a distance, an invisible buffer separating her from everything else. Not healed, just awake. Aware. To a point. She’s miserly with her words, doling them out with excessive economy, speaking only when absolutely necessary.  
  
Then again, Sam was never chatty to begin with, not really. Only when the wonder got the best of her, the universe surprising her, did she let loose an avalanche of words. Even then they’d sometimes fail her, leaving her stalled out in frustration at the limits of their language to encompass the world of possibilities she saw.  
  
He tries to find wonder when he looks at her now, when she allows a precious word to slip loose. All he sees is fearlessness. A reckless child hurtling towards a collision he can’t keep her from anymore, because isn’t that what he’s really been doing all these years by keeping her hidden?   
  
“I need to see Teal’c,” she says.  
  
 _Up._  
  
Jacob mourns the safety of her silence.  
  
* * *  
  
Teal’c cannot say he is surprised to receive a request for his presence from Jacob Carter. Having seen Major Carter for himself on Cimmeria, he has long suspected things are not quite as they appear.  
  
The quilt is but one clue among many that she is not as lost as she pretends.   
  
He watches her now as she stands among the silent Tok’ra halls, her antiquated green fatigues clashing jarringly with the deep violet of the crystal walls. She holds a piece of familiar blue cloth in one hand, but does not offer it, and Teal’c does not reach for it.   
  
“Is this part of the schematic?” he asks. He cannot be sure if she looks relieved they discovered the embedded meaning in her quilt or just surprised. At the very least, a missing piece may explain Rodney McKay’s frustration, his inability to decipher her message.  
  
Teal’c thinks of Rodney McKay’s fingers sliding across her stitches, the beat of jealousy he had felt that this man could understand the inner workings of Major Carter’s mind in a way Teal’c will never truly grasp.   
  
She still has not handed over the piece of cloth. She seems to be struggling on the edge of a decision, and Teal’c believes he finally understands why he has been summoned here today.   
  
“Will you return with me?” he asks.  
  
Her fingers clench in the fabric, her spine stiffening.  
  
“It is likely O’Neill will be there,” he informs her, because she deserves to know exactly what it is that she is contemplating.  
  
There is a flicker of surprise across her face, telling Teal’c this is not a possibility she considered.   
  
“He returned only a few days ago,” he says, laying all the relevant data before her. “Most still believed him dead until that day.”  
  
Her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip and he can see the effort it takes for her to summon words, her jaw flexing and releasing. “He’s…okay?” she eventually squeezes out.  
  
Teal’c does not know what she wishes to hear, that in some ways O’Neill is completely unrecognizable, or maybe just the lie—he is fine, the same man he has always been.   
  
“He is O’Neill,” Teal’c settles for saying because that truly encompasses it all in the end, meaning everything and nothing at the same time.  
  
She absorbs this information without the slightest ripple, bound in an unnatural stillness much like these decaying halls they stand in. She is silent so long that Teal’c steps forward, reaching for her, but not touching.   
  
“Major Carter?”  
  
She flinches, stillness shattered. Looking up at him, her fingers latch onto his arm, tight just above his elbow, digging in with surprising strength.   
  
“Sam,” she says, her voice thin and hoarse in the way her grip is not. “Sam. Please.”  
  
Teal’c suspects that abbreviated, incomplete name will not sound any more correct on his tongue than it does in his mind, this disposal of titles and family ties and marks of honor—the very things that have always defined her for him. It does not feel familiar, but disrespectful. Forgetful.  
  
She must see his hesitation because her fingers clench. “Sam,” she repeats, making her terms clear.   
  
He considers that perhaps her other names are little more than unpleasant reminders now. That maybe this shortened name says something about how little remains of this woman, belied by the dig of her fingernails into his flesh. He should be able to respect this simple request. She asks little, but it still feels like a fundamental loss of some kind. He stares back at her for long moments and notes the way she refuses to flinch away from the regard, no matter how much she may wish to. Eventually he inclines his head.  
  
“Sam,” he says, his voice nearly as ungainly as her own.  
  
She deflates, her hand releasing and she seems smaller now.   
  
Teal’c tries to imagine how Major Carter might have dealt with this situation differently. What the daughter of Jacob Carter would do. Dr. Carter. He wonders which part of her was attracted to the crafting of textiles, which one whispered the numbers and figures that so absorb Rodney McKay. Most importantly, what part of her held that last piece back? What part took the step to come this far to give it to him, only to hold back?  
  
“Will you come?” he asks.  
  
She looks up at him and for a moment she is familiar again, stubbornness and courage building on top of obvious fear. The little square of fabric disappears back into her pocket.  
  
“Yes,” she says, the word blunt and unconditional.  
  
Teal’c is forced to consider that Sam may just be the strongest part of her after all.  
  
* * *  
  
Daniel walks into his office and stumbles to an abrupt stop.   
  
Sudden déjà vu makes him dizzy because Jack is only a few steps behind him, and Sam is standing in his office as if waiting for them. She’s wearing green fatigues and for the moment it’s enough to create the illusion of things being as they once were. She turns to him, mouth opening as if to say something, only to snap back shut, her skin losing all color as she gazes past his shoulder.  
  
Daniel turns to see Jack standing motionlessly in the doorway, staring at Sam as if she’s a ghost, or worse, and just like that the illusion shatters.   
  
Sam backs up a step, hitting hard against the edge of his desk, stumbling slightly. Daniel reaches out a hand to steady her. By the time he manages to look back again, Jack is gone.  
  
Next to him, Sam is trembling.  
  
“Sam,” Daniel says, glancing around for a chair. Her death grip on the edge of his desk makes him worry for her ability to stay standing.  
  
“I’m okay,” she says, and Daniel’s left to do another double take. She looks up at him, and her eyes, God, her eyes. There’s something recognizable there. She glances away then, looking towards the door. She takes a small shuffling step, only to come to a stop like she can’t quite make up her mind about something.  
  
Daniel doesn’t want her to leave. He can’t let her leave.  
  
“I have something for you,” he says, because seeing her standing there is doing strange things to his brain and all he can think about is her box. He’s lugged it around from site to site, sealing it up with industrial packaging tape and a giant label that says ‘essential research.’ Why the random collection of items hold more importance than textbooks or supplies they may need, Daniel doesn’t know. He’s just careful never to leave it behind.  
  
He looks at her, waiting for a reaction maybe, holding up his hands to make sure she’s not going anywhere. “Can you…wait?”  
  
She nods, and her cheeks aren’t so pale anymore while she stands there staring at him like maybe he’s the one who’s lost his mind.   
  
Turning his back on her, he wrenches open the doors to his large cabinet, dropping down to his heels to get at the lowest section. He pulls the box from the bottom, waving away the cloud of dust displaced by the movement. Placing it on the floor, Daniel pulls out a pocketknife to cut free the flaps, pulling them open.  
  
Sam steps closer, looking down over his shoulder. He hears her breath catch and then she’s crouching on the floor next to him. She hesitates before gingerly reaching into the box, touching the things there but not lifting them.  
  
There’s no order to the things in the box, no careful reason for each object included. There’s no technology or research or anything else one might imagine Sam Carter would find particularly valuable. It’s simply the jumble of things left behind in her wake. There are a couple changes of clothing she’d left on base, a few CDs, a thick envelope of pictures, an untouched bag of her favorite candy, a scribbled post-it note—everything he found in her locker and office that he couldn’t bear to think of someone else touching.  
  
“You kept all of this?” she asks, barely a whisper.  
  
He’d like to think it means he always knew she would come back, but it’s probably just a sign of his inability to let go. Maybe that’s what makes him so good at his job, refusing to let go of the past, to let it fall silent. He tried to box her up like some ancient culture…the archeology of Sam.  
  
But unlike some lost civilization, she’s sitting here next to him, contradicting those careful words she’d written for him only a few days before. Shifting forward, he pulls the small slip of paper out of his pocket, exposing the words that already look worn with wear.   
  
_Some things you just don’t come back from._  
  
They stare down at it sitting there in his hand.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she says, obviously still not used to forming words and sentences, giving sounds meaning, but making the effort nonetheless.  
  
He folds the paper carefully in half, running his fingernail along the crease. He places it in the box, adding her words to the collection.  
  
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Sam,” he says, feeling the warmth of her shoulder next to his. He touches her fingers, squeezing them gently. She stiffens at the contact, taking a deep breath, and then she’s squeezing back, a tiny pulse of contact before she pulls away.  
  
Daniel files that fleeting touch away with everything else.  
  
* * *  
  
Jack isn’t ready for what seeing Carter again does to him. Isn’t ready to realize time has dimmed nothing—neither the good nor the bad.  
  
She hadn’t been surprised to see him, he remembers, just caught off-guard, startled.  
  
He doesn’t need her words to understand. He saw the way every muscle in her body tightened at once, jerking her rigid with a swamp of emotions he won’t even hazard a guess at.  
  
And him? Well, he’d just fled.   
_  
It’s what you do.  
_  
In the hangar, Jack is working on his ship with something bordering on mania. He’s making sure everything is ready for take off at a moment’s notice, because leaving is the only option. He’s done it before, but it’s even harder this time, no matter how fresh the memory of her horror is. He’ll go back and wait for Vala on that anonymous planet and try to forget the foolish notion that he could somehow be part of this again. That it wouldn’t matter what he’s done and what he is.  
  
Rounding the front of his ship, Jack comes to an abrupt stop.  
  
Carter is standing a few feet away and this time there is no reaction, not the tiniest movement in her and he wonders how long she’s been standing there preparing herself for this moment.  
  
“Carter,” he says, the name escaping his lips without thought and he sees the way she flinches, the way she tries to hide the telltale jerk of muscles, absorb it into her stillness.   
  
Her hands are fisted at her sides as she stares at the floor between them and he knows she’s building towards something, but that she may not get there on her own.  
  
“If you want me to go, I will,” Jack says.  
  
 _Coward_.  
  
Her eyes close for a moment and then she’s taking a breath and looking up at him, meeting his gaze squarely. His first thought is that she’s so much calmer, so much more together than he remembers all those years ago. But maybe she’s learned to fake it. He certainly has.  
  
Her eyes move slowly over his entire body, returning to linger on his neck. He has no idea which one of them she’s testing.  
  
“Just nod your head or something, and I’m gone,” he says.  
  
He doesn’t realize how much he’s banking on her dismissal until she looks up at him and firmly shakes her head. He swallows against the tightness in his throat and knows that as much as he’s hesitating taking off again, he wants to stay even less.   
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
Her eyes drop away for a moment, slipping out of focus, and then reconnect with him. She nods.  
  
“ _Really_ sure?” he insists.  
  
This time her lips press together in annoyance, her jaw tightening, and he can’t help it, like some old reflex unearthing itself he puts his hands up in surrender, his voice tinged with amusement. “Okay, okay. So you’re sure. I get it.”  
  
There’s something swift and painful in his gut when her lips twitch like she might actually be thinking of smiling, even if the gesture doesn’t materialize.   
  
He misses her smile.  
 _  
You miss a hell of a lot more than that._  
  
Jack takes a sharp step back, nausea rolling in his stomach.  
  
Whatever expression he’s wearing now, whatever Carter may see in it, she’s gone pale and he thinks how stupid he is that he could pretend for even a moment that either of them could forget.  
  
She’s breathing a little hard as she points back over her shoulder, informing him that she’s going to leave.  
  
He nods his understanding, but instead of moving away himself, he stands there to watch her retreat. It seems to take her a great deal of effort to turn her back on him, to trust him that much. Her shoulders are tense, but she does it.   
  
She reaches for the door and he can see it—her hands are shaking.  
  
He should have left while he damn well had the chance.  
  
* * *  
  
Sam doesn’t stop as she exits the hangar, not even when she feels the door finally free her from his gaze boring into her flesh. Her breath is coming out short and shallow, her fingers tingling, but she keeps moving. One foot in front of the other, faster and faster, building momentum. She can only hope it will carry her far enough. Maybe make all of them believe that she’s braver than she is. Stronger. Solid.  
  
If she stops, takes a full breath, lets her thoughts slow long enough to dig in—she’ll falter. Be flattened by everything here.  
  
But if she can just keep moving, become nothing but speed and adrenaline and impossible problems to solve…  
  
Maybe she’ll be fearless.


	8. Epilogue

Daniel cautiously pushes open the door to Rodney’s lab, sticking only his head inside. One can never be too cautious around Rodney. Not necessarily because of the propensity of experiments blowing up, but that Rodney himself is rather combustible from time to time.

Seeing that Rodney is doing nothing more than staring at a wall, Daniel risks stepping into the room. “Hey,” he says.

Rodney’s eyes peel reluctantly away from the quilt tacked up in front of him, the newest piece from Sam duct-taped haphazardly into the bottom corner. He doesn’t manage much more than a grunt in greeting before his eyes snap back.

“Still driving you insane?” Daniel asks.

“I’m almost convinced it’s complete gibberish,” Rodney grumbles, his head tilting to the side as if that might somehow help. “If not for the fact that I think it might just be brilliant.”

Daniel isn’t sure which possibility has Rodney more disgruntled. The fine line between gibberish and genius is one they’ve been flirting with for a long damn time. “Sam hasn’t said anything more about it?”

Rodney shakes his head. “Considering she made it, she does a pretty good job of pretending it doesn’t exist.” He jabs a finger in the direction of the lab. “She’s still looking over my work on the drone weapon.”

Daniel paces to the window and looks down onto the space below. Rodney likes to be able to see what his ‘minions,’ as he calls them, are doing at any given moment. He claims it’s for safety, the lab workers apparently less likely to blow up Earth’s last secure outpost with their idiocy if Rodney can keep one eye on them at all times.

At one end of the lab, Sam sits at a large table with schematics spread around her like a fan, littered with erasers and pencils and crumpled up wads of paper. It should be comforting, the sight of Sam in motion, hard at work at the things that had once been the very compass point of her identity. Somehow it isn’t. Maybe because even Daniel can’t ignore the way she doesn’t quite fit the space around her anymore, the way the pencil is stiff and clumsy in her fingers.

He hasn’t seen much of her since the day she returned. She seems to have disappeared into a routine optimized to see as few people as possible. Her waking hours she spends here in Rodney’s lab as he peppers her with every idea he’s had in the last five years as if he’s been starved for an intellectual equal, or is maybe just looking for reassurance.

Her nights Daniel is pretty sure she spends in Teal’c’s quarters, just like back at the SGC so many years before. He tries not to be jealous of the obvious connection there, the fact that she feels comfortable with Teal’c in a way she doesn’t with any of the rest of them. Teal’c also seems more relaxed in her presence than he has in a long time and it’s hard to stay angry at something so obviously vital to them both.

Daniel gets the feeling this isn’t permanent anyway, like she’s floating through this space, fulfilling some sort of quota, proving something to herself, but with every intention of disappearing again if they all somehow survive this.

Behind Daniel, Rodney lets out a frustrated sigh and steps up next to him. Rubbing at his forehead, his eyebrows draw together in concern. “She won’t even use a calculator for some reason.”

Daniel wants to point out that it’s probably a small miracle they’ve got her using a pencil. Part of him is still waiting for her to pull out a needle and thread.

There’s a knock on the door, and they both turn to see Jack step into the office.

Rodney gives Jack a wary nod and scuttles back to his desk, no doubt realizing he should pull everything together for their imminent meeting.

Jack is happy to ignore Rodney as usual. He crosses over to stand next to Daniel. “You going to be ready to leave in the morning?”

Daniel nods. This will be their second meeting with Vala Mal Doran to see if she ran off with their down payment or is actually going to deliver on her end of the bargain. He thinks bringing Cam and Teal’c as backup wouldn’t be a bad idea if not for the suspicion that Teal’c and Jack in that small of a space together could be epically bad. Or not. You can never tell with those two, these days more than ever.

After all, Jack hadn’t taken off after Sam’s arrival like he would have predicted. Sure, Jack sticks mostly to the hangars, rarely appearing for meals, but he’s still here. Sometimes Daniel catches him huddled over plans and maps with Reynolds. They remind Daniel a bit of Rodney and Sam in those moments, the way Reynolds bounces all his plans off Jack as if looking for reassurance. Or maybe just someone smart and ballsy enough to point out his mistakes. Only this isn’t Jack’s fight to lead. Not anymore.

They’d all do well to remember that.

“What happens after?” Daniel asks.

Jack looks at him in confusion. “After?”

“Yeah,” Daniel says, crossing his arms over his chest. “You said you’d help us get some weapons.”

“And now I have,” Jack says, his voice going flat as he finally catches on.

In light of Jack’s history, Daniel doesn’t think it’s so unreasonable to want to know if he’s going to take off on them again. People leave. It’s in their very nature.

“So you’re done,” Daniel says, challenging him to admit it. Needing, for some reason, to actually hear the words.

Jack shifts. “There’s still Netan.”

That really isn’t an answer. It’s an evasion. “Right,” Daniel says, turning away. He may just prefer Rodney’s fractured frustration to going another round with Jack O’Neill the brick wall.

But then Jack surprises him yet again. “I’m in for the long haul, Daniel,” he says quietly with the tone of a man well and truly trapped, but resigned to it.

Daniel looks back at him, but Jack’s turned to the window now, his eyes glued to something down in the lab. Or rather someone.

Before Daniel can process this latest curve ball from Jack, the office door opens again.

“Okay, McKay,” Reynolds says, stepping into the office with Teal’c and Cam right behind. “Get us all caught up.”

The men grab seats while Rodney starts in on their weekly update. The talk of plans and weapons and invasions and probabilities of success wash over Daniel, his attention instead caught on watching the people crammed into the office.

None of it is right. Jack is too deliberate, as if every word or action has been thought through ten times. Teal’c is listless, quiet, almost detached. Anxiety is a base state for Rodney, but it’s the concern clouding his expression every time he looks at one of them, the awareness that everything is off that isn’t right. Rodney isn’t supposed to be that self-aware.

Reynolds is hesitating, and Sam has one foot out the door.

As for Daniel…he doesn’t know what he is anymore.

All he can feel is a strange tightness building in his belly, something that takes him long moments to identify as he sits there with them, the entire team past and present. It’s not the familiar, dependable anger, but something much, much worse.

It’s hope.


End file.
